Under Construction

This and that

We spent the last few days at the beach with my family. Kind of a random trip but fun to hang out with my parents and sister and the weather and scenery were amazing.

Before the beach, Christmas was fabulous. Biscuit outdid herself with beautiful gift making (mini "art" quilts for the grandmas, painted ceramic mugs for the grandpas and dad) but the funniest were the painted, wood flags.

She painted these over the summer on leftover wood plaques. They've been in a drawer for months but apparently she pulled them out and wrapped them up for gifts. I had no idea till they got opened and it was hilarious. Especially all of us trying to identify the state flags. "This is Ohio," she'd state confidently. "Ummm, I'm pretty sure that's New Mexico" I'd suggest. We were probably both wrong. My mom's was labeled on the back "I think this flag is Texes." It wasn't.

These are the things I brought home from the beach. I'm almost as obsessed with seaweed as I am with lichen and moss.

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I've been in the mood to go running/jogging. This morning was super foggy and perfect for a run/jog so I went. I think it's time to get back in shape. Perfect with the New Year.

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While I was running (jogging) I imagined a project I'd like to make. Jogged to Michael's but they were sold out of the supplies I needed. Typical, right? Jogged home and Mr. H had precisely what I needed and I was able to make a prototype in about 15 minutes. It's exactly what I had in mind. Don't you love that? Photos once I've got it perfect.

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Our house is in a completely unbearable state. Messy, cluttered, ugh. We spent the day after Christmas dismantling the diswasher (completely!) It works again but we never caught up on dishes. Then we went on a trip so now we're behind on laundry. Plus the holiday stuff. Tomorrow I plan to put away/clean/purge and start the new year fresh. Biscuit is freshening the windows with wintery snowflakes.

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Oscar's a grouch. I'm guessing teeth but there's a touch of a cold and he's trying to learn to crawl and that's a lot to do when you're a baby. He's generally SO happy we don't quite know what to do with him when he fusses. Fussy babies are a lot more work.

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Biscuit is hilarious. She's also endlessly hungry and clumsy. Growth spurt?

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I'm trying to finish up some scrapbooking projects so I best sign off for the evening.

Happy New Year!

Christmas 2011

First off, thank you ALL for the super nice comments on the contest post. It seems the secret to getting comments is awesome free stuff. Still, it was nice to hear from some readers who don't usually comment. I was online right at midnight 12/23 and used random.org to choose among the 38 comments received. The winner was #4, Becky from Hilton Krew. I emailed her and promptly logged off in favor of making more Christmas gifts and some unbelievable cinnamon rolls. So yay for Becky and as a consolation prize for the rest of you awesome folks may I recommend a recipe? I know pretty much everyone reads The Pioneer Woman but I bought her cookbook for a Christmas gift and first photocopied the cinnamon roll recipe. It's also online here. They are SO GOOD. Make yourself some! A pan of those and you'll totally forget you didn't win the book.

Christmas was great. Biscuit originally asked for an iPad, and iPhone and some other electronic she wasn't going to get but a few weeks before Christmas had a change of heart and asked for a Razor scooter (along with Skittles, Judy Moody books and a diamond ring ;) She got all those items but the diamond wasn't real ;).

This is the funniest photo of Christmas. We were all up for HOURS waiting for Biscuit. Finally, Mr. H woke her up at 8 am and she dragged herself to the livingroom. Talk about anticlimactic. But it all went up from there.

Hope yours was merry and bright. More later when I can be more coherent but Monique asked who won the contest and I realized I hadn't posted the winner!

Miniature

Inspired by the work of an artist we saw at Renegade who used model train miniatures in her work, I made some little scenes in glass vials.

They're ornaments.

Those little figures are so expensive at the model train store so I was glad I could make a second ornament for friends representing their two boys on the scooters they got this year.

The top one is for us. Biscuit in the blue dress and a more grown up Oscar on our tire swing. The bit of branch is from the tree our tire swing actually hangs from. The moss is from our sidewalk. I wonder how it will dry? I was too impatient to dry the moss before assembly so we might have mold by next Christmas.

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In other news, still 24 hours to enter the book drawing (I mis-wrote yesterday--it's open through the 23rd). It's so fun to see all the comments and I'm sorry I'm so lame about responding.

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I just finished a Christmas present that came out exactly like I wanted. It's so funky/cool. Can't wait to share it post holiday.

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Hope you're ready for Christmas if you're celebrating. I'm off to wrap and figure out what the jolly red guy is bringing Oscar.

 

A wrap

The giant $20 roll of white paper from the printing store has to be one of the best purchases I've made in the past 5 years. It just keeps going.

Add colorful tissue paper snowflakes

Or crepe paper,  holiday napkins, doilies and label stickers

And you've got a pretty awesome, totally fun-to-do wrapping system. Biscuit and I have been wrapping fools and we're getting close to done (at least with the presents that are done--also still working on making gifts ;)

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Don't forget, there's still time to enter the book give-away below. Friends and family are totally welcome to enter as well (I know a few of you are reading). Deadline is tomorrow at midnight. It's been so fun to get comments from new folks, regular commenters and lurkers. Thanks so much, guys!

A book for you--but not in time for Christmas

Hello! Welcome to my first ever not-exactly-sponsored-but-affiliated-with-a-product post. Excited? Me too!

So, I don't think I mentioned it here but I have a project in a book! A book that came out earlier this month. It's Fabric-by-Fabric One-Yard Wonders (the sequel to the first One-Yard Wonders). Look, it's even on Amazon. My flat screen tv cover pattern is on page 350! How many exclamation points can I use in two paragraphs?(!)

Anyway, let's start with the important stuff--if you want to win a copy of this book leave a comment by midnight on December 23 and I'll email the winner on Christmas Eve and the publisher will send you this giant book full of 101 projects.

THE BOOK

See, giant book! There's a huge envelope of patterns in the front followed by 415 full color pages in a spiral binding that conveniently stays open to the page you want. I always like that in a craft book.

I received the book free (part of my compensation for being a contributor) and it arrived on Saturday. I finally had a chance today to take a closer look. For as much as I sew I only branched out of using quilting cottons within the last few years so I found the beginnings of the sections where they describe the types of fabric quite useful. For example, I had no idea what a "woven pile" fabric was. Turns out it's fuzzy stuff like corduroy, velveteen or chenille. 

WHAT I (ALMOST) MADE

When I first flipped through the book my immediate reaction was that there were tons of things I'd make. But then, when it came down to choosing something to make for this blog post I actually got stuck. Of course that's more my fault than the book's. I wanted to make something that didn't require  pattern pieces from the envelope, could be made with fabric on hand and could be made in an hour or two.

I have a great stash of knits so that's the chapter I went to. Ignoring the fine, fine project on page 350 which totally fit my criteria :) I opted to make the Speedy Ruffle Scarf on page 336.

HOW I (ALMOST) MADE IT

I used a super soft, super lightweight gray jersey knit. It happened to be 60 inches wide rather than the 45 inches called for in the pattern so I adjusted the number of strips I cut to get the proper total length. Also, I used my rotary cutter and ruler to cut the strips which I estimate was about 4000 times easier than marking the knit and cutting with scissors. Of course, I understand not everyone has a rotary cutter but if you've got it, use it!

From the image in the book I had no idea how the scarf was constructed so my usual approach of going off the photo rather than the written instructions didn't work out. Luckily, the instructions were very clear and easy to follow. The hand sewing was a bit tedious but I had my mom on speakerphone so I got all caught up with the family as I stitched away.

The next step would be to machine sew the ruffled layers but I didn't get there. I feel confident it will work (I put a stretch needle in my machine--I'm ready to go) but it's going to have to wait. I didn't want to be late on my one and only scheduled blog post of the year and it's already after 10 pm! You'll have to come back another time to see my snuggly scarf.

SHOULD YOU BUY THIS BOOK?

If the Speedy Ruffle Scarf pattern is representative of the book, it's clearly written and easy to follow. If you like to do a variety of types of sewing from home dec to toys to apparel this is a great book and you'll certainly find enough projects to make it worth the $30 price tag (more like $20 on Amazon).It's also a very informative book with tips for sewing different types of fabrics.

If you have kids (or sew for kids) this book would be especially worthwhile as there are a number of toys and kids' clothing pieces. I guess kids fit into a yard of fabric better than most adults.

On the other hand, I'm going to be honest, if you're like me and get irritated following patterns this may not be the book for you. I find it tedious to follow a detailed pattern and there are a lot of super adorable projects in here that I simply wouldn't make out of laziness. The piglet stuffed toy on page 302 is a perfect example. Of course with 101 patterns I could just skip the complicated ones. I flipped through the book with a critical eye and still found more than 10 projects I would definitely make and several projects that described a new-to-me technique. Given that, I'd say the book would be a worthwhile investment for your sewing library even for a pattern-phobe.

Of course, you don't even have to make an investment--just leave a comment and you might win a book. And if you don't sew it'd make a great gift.

And with that, I'll conclude the longest post in history with a list of the other blogs on the blog book tour. I'm sure there are several other chances to win books so take a look and the blogs of the other contributors. Thanks for reading!

12/12/2011 Becka's Project Journal

12/13/2011 Craft Buds

12/14/2011 Patch Work Duck Designs

12/15/2011 Patch Work Duck Designs

12/15/2011 A Spoonful of Sugar

12/15/2011 Nifty Kidstuff

12/15/2011 Becka's Project Journal

12/16/2011 Nom Nom Nom Nom

12/16/2011 Quaint and Quirky

12/17/2011 ikatbag

12/17/2011 Two Brown Birds

12/18/2011 Sharon Sews

12/19/2011 LBG Studio

12/19/2011 Carolina Fair Designs

12/19/2011 Under Construction

12/20/2011 Little Blue Cottage

12/21/2011 Craftzine

12/21/2011 Neuroses Galore

12/21/2011 Emily Steffen

12/22/2011 Jenna Lou Loves You

12/23/2011 Spincushion

12/27/2011 One Inch World

12/28/2011 Sew Sew Etc.

January ‘12 Lu Lu Carter

January ’12 Fiberosity

January ’12 Zuhause

January ’12 Obsessively Stiching

January ’12 No Bad Days

January ’12 Craft & Cackle

January ’12 AfricanKelli

Stocking holders

You wouldn't be able to tell by looking but Mr. H and I spent a few days going back and forth on the design for these. I was 100% minimalist. Mr. H was in favor of more embellishment. We ended up with the chimneys and they're perfect. Even better than what I had in mind.

Four holders, four woods.

Mr. H picked beautiful straight grain fir.

I picked plywood. The kids got cherry and quartersawn white oak. Biscuit wants her silver tree back.

And I made a little glitter science display. Mr. H's friend who is a science teacher thought it looked very dangerous. He knows how hard it is to clean up spilled glitter.

I love those tiny Erlenmeyer flasks.

Candy!

I kind of loving having our Christmas tree up. So sparkly.

I always want to host a holiday making party and always run out of time but not this year. Last Friday I had a few friends over for candy making. It was so fun and much easier than hosting a crafting party. Granted, I invited folks only 24 hours in advance but three friends came over and we spent 3 delightful hours in the kitchen making

Peppermint Bark (so good!)

Caramel

Peppernuts (four QUARTS!--now I remember why I always halve the recipe)

Mulling Spice packets (aren't they pretty?)

Rum Balls (a friend made these with her family recipe)

Really, so fun. And productive!

They even did the dishes.

December Daily thing

So, once again, Ali Edwards has inspired me to scrapbook.

She does an annual project called "December Daily" which is just what it sounds like. Scrapbook every day in December.

She focuses on telling one story each day (even if it didn't happen that exact day). I honestly thought it sounded like too much work but I decided to create a little formula for myself and go for it! I'm already a few days behind but I'm not worried.

As you can quickly see, my formula involves three photos, some journaling and a transparency over the top with a single word describing the story.

I'm sewing things together with the sewing machine and gold thread.

The only supplies I bought were the gold pen for journaling (it doesn't show up very well :( and the colored cardstock. About $5 total. Not bad and I'm already loving how fun it is to document one of my favorite times of the year.

 

Gingerbread

This was really fun.

That awesome cookie cutter set cuts out the parts of a house. It's genius! It's Wilton's brand and I know some Michael's carry it but, if you're local, I got it at Castle Cake Shop on Fair Oaks.

Arranging the candy may be Biscuit's favorite part.

The masterpieces:

Mine, with my traditional Necco roof (modified due to Necco shortage)

Biscuit's with a cool Chex roof and a super awesome outdoor fire made of Dots and pretzels.

And my mom's.

Yay for tradition

Here's 2010 with links for every year (all the way back to 2007 when Biscuit was wee)